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The <keyword id="59844" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="european-space-agency" source="Orion">European Space Agency</keyword>'s (<keyword id="191401" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="esa" source="Orion">ESA</keyword>) said its Earth-observing Sentinel-1A satellite barely escaped a "high-risk collision" from a 2021 Russian missile test that had generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris in space. ESA's Sentinel-1 mission is designed as a two-satellite constellation, which provides an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of <keyword id="6359982" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="earth" source="Orion">Earth</keyword>'s surface. In a series of tweets on Wednesday, the ESA officials said Sentinel-1A, launched in April 2014, had to perform a set of emergency manoeuvres on Monday to avoid a "high-risk collision." "On Monday, for the first time, we performed a set of manoeuvres to avoid a high-risk collision with #SpaceDebris created in the #Cosmos1408 anti-satellite test last year," ESA Operations said. The agency noted that although its part of their routine work, yet this "was a difficult #CollisionAvoidance manoeuvre", "unique" as well as "tricky to avoid" because the situation evolved rapidly, and they had less than 24 hours of warning. Even though the Russian satellite orbited more than 200 km below Sentinel-1A, the energy released during its explosion pushed fragments of it all the way up, intersecting the satellite's orbit. As a result, the team said Sentinal-1A had to alter its orbit "by 140 m in order to prevent collision with a debris fragment". Though the Sentinel-1A is safe for now, the ESA called out against the threat due to such space debris. "Quick reaction by teams at #MissionControl, who managed to plan and execute an avoidance manoeuvre in a matter of hours, meant we safely avoided impact," they said. "This incident highlights the devastating risks to the whole space environment from the (intentional) creation of space debris," they added. In November 2021, Russia fired a direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missile that collided with its defunct satellite, generating hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris, or space junk. The DA-ASAT test also posed risk to the <keyword id="6382020" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="international-space-station" source="Orion">International Space Station</keyword>, at that time prompting an outrage by the US. According to the <keyword id="183676" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="us-department-of-state" source="Orion">US Department of State</keyword>, the anti-satellite test generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threaten the interests of all nations. "...I'm outraged by this irresponsible and destabilising action. Their actions are reckless and dangerous, threatening as well the Chinese space station and the taikonauts on board," <keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> Administrator <keyword id="252415" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="bill-nelson" source="Orion">Bill Nelson</keyword> had said condemning the act. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/google-russia-has-no-money-to-pay-salaries-to-its-100-employees-heads-for-bankruptcy/articleshow/91658749.cms">Google Russia has no money to pay salaries to its 100 employees, heads for bankruptcy</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/entertainment/news/late-comic-book-legend-stan-lee-set-to-live-again-in-movies-as-marvel-studios-signs-20-year-deal/articleshow/91655455.cms">Late comic book legend Stan Lee set to live again in movies as Marvel Studios signs 20-year deal</a>

ESA satellite Sentinel-1A dodges a 'high-risk collision' from Russian space debris

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The war in Ukraine has highlighted how hard air operations are in a large conventional conflict.</li><li>The war has also shown the value of drones—big and small, cheap and expensive—to modern militaries.</li></ul>As the war in Ukraine unfolds, the US military is watching and learning valuable lessons.The war has underscored for the Pentagon how valuable drones will be as well as how difficult it will be to keep those and other aircraft operating in a large-scale conventional conflict.The US military is already preparing to give unmanned aerial systems more missions in a potential war with China or Russia. In exercises this summer, US airmen trained to use drones for a wider set of operations in a variety of different settings.<h2>A new way of fighting</h2><div type="image" title="Air Force MQ-9 Reaper Wyoming highway" height="1335" width="2000" msid="103943572" hostid="261" sizebytes="249080"></div>In a large-scale conflict with a near-peer adversary, like Russia or China, the US's biggest airbases and ones close to frontline would likely come under sustained attack. In response to that challenge, the Air Force is training to disperse its forces and make targeting harder for enemies.In June, US airmen landed an <a href="https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/06/mq-9-reaper-is-americas-go-anywhere-eyes-in-the-skies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MQ-9 Reaper</a> drone on a <a href="https://www.919sow.afrc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3430194/mq-9-completes-first-ever-mission-using-dirt-landing-zone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dirt runway</a> for the first time, showcasing the aircraft's ability to operate in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-reaper-drone-made-first-ever-dirt-landing-2023-6" target="_top">austere environments</a>.During that exercise, the MQ-9 successfully carried an experimental travel pod with supplies for ground troops. The pod may not carry much, but it could deliver "critical items to austere locations," an officer involved in the test said, calling it the "Reaper Express."<div type="image" title="Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone travel pod" height="1500" width="2000" msid="103943576" hostid="261" sizebytes="214896"></div>During another exercise in July, US airmen for the first time relied on satellite communications to conduct an MQ-9 Reaper mission using just a mission-control element.Normally, drone operations have a launch-and-recovery element, which oversees takeoff and landing, and a mission-control element, which operates the drone, usually from hundreds of miles away.For the July exercise, called Grand Warrior, airmen assigned to the mission-control element received training on launch and recovery procedures and then used satellite communications to conduct their missions with the help of a system called Automatic Takeoff &amp; Land.Using only the mission-control element allowed the unit to reduce the number of personnel and amount of equipment it needed, shrinking their overall footprint. A smaller footprint means drone units can move away from main hubs and use more remote, less developed airfields.<div type="image" title="Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone pilots" height="1333" width="2000" msid="103943578" hostid="261" sizebytes="193014"></div>These exercises reflect the Air Force's intention to use drones in a wider role, over longer distances, and from a greater range of bases — all in keeping with its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-air-force-special-operators-landing-on-roads-beaches-2023-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">focus on Agile Combat Employment</a>, an approach to dispersed operations that is meant to make Air Force units more flexible and harder for rivals, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-air-force-rapid-dragon-palletized-munitions-catch-chinese-attention-2023-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">especially China</a>, to track and shut down.During ACE exercises like Grand Warrior, airmen have been training on different capabilities, such as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mc130-transport-plane-has-support-special-ops-mission-since-vietnam-2021-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forward Arming and Refueling Points</a>, that allow them to quickly reposition aircraft at <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-commandos-practice-new-airfield-operations-2021-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">forward positions</a> and simulate real-world missions, like having to relocate and set up improvised airfields if Chinese or Russian forces target their large main airbases.Landing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/a10-highway-landing-shows-air-force-focus-on-distributed-operations-2022-11" target="_top">fighter and attack jets</a> on roads and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/air-forces-use-highways-to-keep-operating-when-bases-destroyed-2023-7" target="_top">highways</a> is also a part of ACE that the US and its allies are focusing on, doing it with a variety of aircraft, including drones, in the US and in Europe.<h2>A cultural milestone</h2><div type="image" title="Two men in army uniforms adjust the propellor of a small aircraft." height="1332" width="2000" msid="103943580" hostid="261" sizebytes="152638"></div>The US military used Reapers and drones like it extensively in its counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns in the Middle East and Africa, but the <a href="https://www.sandboxx.us/news/kerch-bridge-is-key-in-retaking-crimea-but-can-ukraine-take-it-out/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">war in Ukraine</a> has shown that drones of all sizes and types are needed in modern warfare.Russia and Ukraine have used unmanned aerial systems — both military-grade and modified commercial drones — extensively for a variety of missions, including reconnaissance, strike, and electronic warfare. While US troops have used drones, big and small, for years, the Pentagon is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ukraine-fighting-drone-war-us-military-was-waiting-for-2023-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">still integrating them into its formations</a>.For the US Air Force, the growing focus on incorporating drones into its operations is a significant milestone for a service that since its founding has been oriented around human pilots.The policies and thinking of US military service branches are often guided by members of a few communities within them. For the US Air Force, fighter pilots <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fighter-jock-culture-and-influence-may-hinder-air-force-in-the-future-2019-2" target="_top">have long been that dominant influence</a>. Of 22 Air Force chiefs of staff, the service's highest-ranking uniformed officer, 17 have come from the fighter/attack communities.Considering that legacy, the Air Force's embrace of drone aircraft is a sign of how service leaders' mentality and expectations about the future battlefield are changing.Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations and Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He has a B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.A. in strategy, cybersecurity, and intelligence from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and is currently pursuing a Juris Doctor degree from Boston College Law School.

The US Air Force is using satellites and dirt runways to prepare its drones for a different kind of war

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>'s Perseverance rover snapped stunning photos of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-from-nasa-igenuity-drone-historic-flight-shows-own-shadow-2021-4">the Ingenuity helicopter</a> flying on <keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword>.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-ingenuity-helicopter-flies-on-mars-2021-4">Ingenuity's first flight</a> on Monday proved that aerial exploration can be possible on other planets.</li><li>NASA expects to get full video footage of the flight from both <keyword id="2459491" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="ingenuity">Ingenuity</keyword> and the Perseverance rover.</li></ul>NASA's Ingenuity <keyword id="46492" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="helicopter">helicopter</keyword> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-ingenuity-helicopter-flies-on-mars-2021-4">made spaceflight history</a> when it lifted off from the Martian surface for the first time on Monday morning.The Perseverance rover, which carried Ingenuity nearly 300 million miles to Mars, watched and filmed from a nearby overlook, producing images like the above.It saw the 4-pound drone fly 10 feet high, hover there for 30 seconds, and safely lower itself back into the red Martian dust. Perseverance then beamed the pictures back to NASA.The new images show Ingenuity hovering and then landing against a stunning backdrop: the 200-foot-tall ocher cliffs of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-rover-landing-jezero-crater-search-for-alien-life-2021-2">Jezero Crater</a>.The team of Ingenuity engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-ingenuity-mars-helicopter-control-room-cheers-video-2021-4">erupted in applause and cheers as the images arrived</a>. In sequence, they show the drone hover and land, as you can see in the below GIF from NASA's mission-control livestream.<div type="image" title="ingenuity flight mars helicopter" height="450" width="800" msid="82146508" hostid="261"></div>Complete video of the flight will likely be available within a week. Ingenuity also beamed back its own photo from a black-and-white navigation camera on its belly, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-from-nasa-igenuity-drone-historic-flight-shows-own-shadow-2021-4">showing its shadow on the ground below</a>.The helicopter's color camera should have recorded video footage throughout its flight, though NASA has yet to receive it.<div type="image" title="ingenuity mars helicopter first flight photo black white shadow" height="781" width="1041" msid="82146509" hostid="261"></div>This was the first powered, controlled flight ever conducted on another planet. Now that NASA has shown the technology works, future space helicopters could explore canyons, caves, and rocky fields that are too dangerous for rovers. Mars drones could even do reconnaissance for future astronauts.Before the flight, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword>, told Insider that Ingenuity's success would prove that NASA "can add an aerial dimension to discovery and exploration on Mars.""That aerial dimension, of course, opens up aspects of science and overall exploration that, frankly, at this moment in time are only our dreams," he said.Ingenuity has achieved its main goal - to prove rotorcraft technology can work on Mars - but its mission isn't over yet. In the next 30 days, the space drone will attempt up to four more flights, venturing higher and farther each time. Once Ingenuity's mission is over, the Perseverance rover will continue on its own epic journey: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-takes-first-drive-on-mars-2021-3">searching for fossils of microbial alien life</a> in the ancient river delta of Jezero Crater.

Photos from NASA's Perseverance rover show the Ingenuity helicopter flying on Mars for the first time

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Traditionally it's been difficult for corporate trainers to make certain subjects interesting enough to keep people engaged.</li><li>Simeon Quarrie took a love of <keyword id="6355118" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="technology">technology</keyword> and a background in wedding photography to start VIVIDA, an immersive <keyword id="6360697" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="training">training</keyword> company that relies heavily on virtual reality.</li><li>In celebration of the launch of Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Fold, a device that's reshaping the technology landscape, we're celebrating innovative professionals like Quarrie who are reshaping their industries.</li></ul>Simeon Quarrie knows firsthand the power the right visuals and story can have on learning. "When I was a child, I was often six months behind in class because traditional teaching methods didn't click with me," he says. "But I found that when things were delivered in a way that was creative and involved some kind of story, I became engrossed."This way of thinking underpins Quarrie's work today. As the CEO and founder of the immersive-training company VIVIDA, he uses storytelling and the latest technology to transform the mundane into the compelling. In doing so, he is reshaping the way people learn and appreciate subjects ranging from cybercrime to workplace diversity.Quarrie's love of technology began as a preteen, the day his grandmother bought a PC for the family - a purchase that ultimately led to him finding plenty of work during the first dot-com boom.But when his interest in this burgeoning industry started to wane, he pivoted to pursue his other passion: storytelling. Though he initially created websites and videos for small businesses, he shifted to become a wedding photographer during the 2008 financial crisis."I figured that if I was going to do it, I'd do it on a whole new level," Quarrie says. "We'd do shoots costing £30,000 that involved things like taking a trip to India to see the bride's dress being made so that when she walked down the aisle back in the UK everyone understood the story behind it."Soon, several large organizations were asking the young entrepreneur if he could apply the same methodology to other subjects - especially those that most people found unspeakably dull.One of his first corporate challenges, he says, was when a client asked him, "There's a subject called 'business continuity' which is really dry - can you do something with that?'"Despite having no idea what business continuity was, Quarrie said yes. He knew he could bring it to life.<h2>The rise of <keyword id="6380951" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="vr">VR</keyword></h2>With VIVIDA taking shape, Quarrie was presented with a golden opportunity to up his storytelling game when virtual reality finally started to live up to its early promise.The chance to try it out came when Barclays, one of the UK's biggest banks, wanted to educate its teams around the world about how the company was keeping it and its customers safe.Quarrie figured the perfect way to do this would be to let people step into a virtual world. Ahead of a meeting with Barclays, Quarrie's team recreated the company's UK control center, virtually allowing the users to step inside and experience a room full of information screens."There'd been a mix-up with the meeting rooms, so we ended up doing the demo on the working floor," he says. "When one of the C-suite's personal assistants came out to see what the commotion was, she asked if she could try on the headset. Thirty seconds later, she said, 'We've got to elevate this.'"Since that foray into VR, Quarrie and his team have created an award-winning experience that has put people inside a version of their own office as fire rips through it.They've also taken people into an imaginary mission-control center of the dark web so they can see how hackers steal their data.And they've helped the senior leadership team at one of the big four accountancy firms see the world through the eyes of a young Black employee trying to land a job at a large corporation."It was quite something watching some of them take off their headsets with watery eyes," Quarrie says. "You could see them thinking, 'What would that have been like if it was my son or my daughter?' You could sense perceptions starting to shift."<div type="image" title="System_Engineer_Astronaut_With_Capsule_0635_Edit1.0.3 copy" height="1955" width="3910" msid="80514856" hostid="261"></div><h2>A new way of doing things</h2>To succeed in any business, Quarrie says, founders need to keep challenging the status quo. In his case, this means continuing to ask how corporate training can be more effective, though the opportunity to break the mold exists in every sector."Look at the Lenovo X1 Fold," he says. "The designers could have said, 'The computers we've already got - they work. They're good enough.' But instead, they asked what might be possible. They asked, 'What could we do?' And when people do that, that's where true innovation starts to take place."And the ThinkPad X1 Fold is truly a groundbreaking device: The laptop with a foldable screen offers innovative ways to interact with a PC, essentially reshaping how users create, connect, and collaborate to maximize productivity. Lenovo's ThinkShield solution offers unparalleled security, while the Intel™ Core® powerful core processor with hybrid technology delivers full PC performance.Last year certainly reminded Quarrie of the need to remain open to new ideas; his hand was forced in many ways by his team's temporary inability to turn up at an office with a box full of VR headsets. Undeterred, he set about developing new ways of bringing thought-provoking training content to everything from PCs and tablets to mobile phones."I think the dream projects for me will always be those where we can help people to spend some time in someone else's shoes," Quarrie says. "If we can give them a different vantage point - whether that be down to gender, race, sexuality, or whatever - then the work that we're doing becomes really powerful."<a href="https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/thinkpad-x1-fold/?cid=uk:media:v2b1yk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored nofollow sponsored">Find out how Lenovo is helping to reshape different industries with the ThinkPad X1 Fold</a> This post was created by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sponsor-posts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored">Insider Studios</a> with Lenovo.

A startup founder went from being a wedding photographer to a virtual-reality trainer. Here's how his company is reshaping corporate training.

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-first-interplanetary-helicopter-in-perseverance-mars-rover-belly-2020-7">NASA's Perseverance rover</a> is set to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/watch-live-nasa-perseverance-rover-mars-landing-mission-control-2021-2">land on Mars</a> on Thursday.</li><li>Entry, descent, and landing are the trickiest parts of a <keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword> mission, often called the "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-perseverance-rover-seven-minutes-terror-landing-video-2020-7">seven minutes of terror</a>."</li><li>To land in the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-rover-landing-jezero-crater-search-for-alien-life-2021-2">Jezero Crater</a>, Perseverance will use a jetpack and advanced navigation system.</li></ul><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword> is about to accomplish an unprecedented feat: The <keyword id="9569864" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="perseverance-mars-rover">Perseverance Mars rover</keyword> is set to land on Mars on Thursday and film its own high-stakes landing.The vehicle has almost reached its destination. On Thursday, after nearly seven months and 300 million miles of space travel, the robot is expected to plummet through the thin Martian atmosphere, deploy a parachute and a jetpack, then gently land in an ancient lake bed.Once set up there, it will search for mineral deposits from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-rover-landing-jezero-crater-search-for-alien-life-2021-2">an old lake, which could contain signs of ancient microbial life</a>. The rover is programmed to cache samples of Martian rock and soil so that a future mission can carry them back to Earth for scientists to study.But first, Perseverance must land successfully."I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that entry, descent, and landing is the most critical and most dangerous part of a mission," Allen Chen, who leads that process for Perseverance at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a press briefing. "Success is never assured, and that's especially true when we're trying to land the biggest, heaviest, and most complicated rover we've ever built to the most dangerous site we've ever attempted to land at."A series of precise, automated maneuvers must go exactly right to safely deliver Perseverance to its destination. There's no room for error.That's why aerospace engineers have a special nickname for this phase of a Mars mission: "seven minutes of terror."<div type="image" title="mars perseverance rover nasa entry descent landing separation" height="1405" width="1874" msid="80757693" hostid="261"></div>For Perseverance, this process will be all the more terrifying because of its landing site. Mars' Jezero Crater is a dried-up lake bed rich with exposed layers of ancient rock, which could hold remnants of past microbial life. Steep cliffs run through the middle of the landing site, along with sand dunes and boulders. "Jezero Crater is a great place, magnificent place for <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword>," Chen said. "But when I look at it from a landing perspective, I see danger."If Perseverance arrives safely, however, it will then beam back <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-perseverance-rover-seven-minutes-terror-landing-video-2020-7">the first video footage</a> of a landing on another planet. High-definition cameras and microphones on the rover should record the whole thing, and NASA has said it will make the footage available later."We're really looking forward to bringing everyone for the ride," Chen said.<h2>A parachute and a jetpack will slow Perseverance's plummet</h2>A NASA animation shows what the Perseverance landing should look like if all goes well:The illustration below breaks down each step of that process."We've got literally seven minutes to get from the top of the atmosphere to the surface of Mars, going from 13,000 mph to zero in perfect sequence, perfect choreography, perfect timing," <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/team/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adam Steltzner</a>, chief engineer of the Perseverance mission, said in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a 2012 NASA-JPL video</a> about the Curiosity rover (which is still going strong on Mars). "The computer has to do it all by itself with no help from the ground. If any one thing doesn't work just right, it's game over."<div type="image" title="mars perseverance rover nasa entry descent landing parachute jetpack diagram" height="1080" width="1920" msid="80757694" hostid="261"></div>The first step in Perseverance's landing process is for the spacecraft that's carried it 300 million miles to drop its cargo: a top-shaped capsule with the rover inside. This entry capsule will succumb to Mars' gravity and plummet towards the planet, protecting Perseverance with a heat shield.<div type="image" title="mars perseverance rover landing entry descent nasa" height="1519" width="2700" msid="80757695" hostid="261"></div>The capsule will plow through the Martian atmosphere at over 12,000 mph, and its shield should deflect material that's been super-heated by that extreme speed. The outside of the heat shield will get as hot as 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit. This will cause it to streak across the Martian sky like a bright meteor.Mars' atmosphere is about 1% as thick as ours on Earth, but it should still slow the capsule down.<div type="image" title="mars 2020 perseverance rover aeroshell atmospheric entry plasma 7 minutes terror animation nasa jpl 1" height="1125" width="1500" msid="80757696" hostid="261"></div>The capsule must use its thrusters to steer itself toward the landing target, since pockets of air with varying density can tilt it off-course.Once it's slowed to twice the speed of sound, Perseverance will deploy a 70-foot-wide parachute. Then the capsule will jettison its heat shield, clearing the way for the rover's radar system to survey the land below. An autopilot-like navigation system should kick in to reconfigure the vehicle's trajectory toward the landing site.<div type="image" title="mars perseverance rover nasa entry descent landing parachute" height="1080" width="1440" msid="80757697" hostid="261"></div>That system, called "terrain-relative navigation," compares what the rover's cameras see to an onboard map of the Martian surface, built from satellite imagery. It should recognize and avoid the cliffs, sand dunes, and boulder fields that litter Jezero Crater.Perseverance's supersonic parachute can only slow its descent to about 150 mph - as fast as a skydiver plummeting to Earth with no parachute. That's why NASA engineers also equipped the rover with a jetpack.About a mile above the Martian surface, the jetpack will ignite its engines, with the rover attached to its underside.<div type="image" title="mars perseverance rover nasa jetpack entry descent landing arrival" height="1405" width="1874" msid="80757698" hostid="261"></div>The jetpack will separate from the remaining parts of the entry capsule and fly Perseverance to a safe spot identified by the terrain-relative navigation. By the time the rover reaches its landing place, its speed should have slowed to about 1.5 mph.<div type="image" title="mars perseverance rover entry descent landing jetpack nasa" height="1406" width="1875" msid="80757699" hostid="261"></div>Very slowly, the jetpack will unspool 25-foot-long nylon cords that will lower Perseverance until its wheels touch the ground.<div type="image" title="mars perseverance rover nasa landing jezero crater" height="1687" width="2250" msid="80757700" hostid="261"></div>About 11 minutes later, mission controllers should get the signal that the rover touched down.After that, assuming everything has gone right, the rover will spend a few months checking and calibrating its scientific instruments. Then it will <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-first-interplanetary-helicopter-in-perseverance-mars-rover-belly-2020-7">release a helicopter from its belly</a> and turn its cameras to the drone as it lifts off for the first-ever controlled flight on another planet.Following those steps, the rover will continue on its core mission: searching for ancient rocks that could hold hints of microbial <keyword id="582933" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Alien-life">alien life</keyword>.<h2>Watch NASA mission control live during landing</h2>NASA TV will be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/watch-live-nasa-perseverance-rover-mars-landing-mission-control-2021-2">broadcasting live from the mission-control room</a> on Thursday, providing real-time updates with expert commentary. The livestream, embedded below, starts at 2:15 p.m. ET on Thursday.You can watch the mission controllers' reactions as they get signals from the rover. It takes 11 minutes for messages to travel from Mars to Earth, so once NASA gets the signal that the landing process has begun, Perseverance will already be on Mars - dead or alive.A post-landing signal from the rover, indicating that it has safely reached Martian soil, should come at around 3:55 p.m. ET. At that point, if the landing succeeded, mission control will surely erupt in cheers and applause.This post has been updated with additional information. It was originally published on February 8, 2021.

NASA's Perseverance rover is about to attempt a supersonic plunge to Mars, complete with a jetpack landing

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Much of Wall Street's trading force is now working from home. But trading remotely comes with disadvantages. </li><li>"Trading from home has never been done," a trading at exec at one of the biggest banks told Business Insider, referring to the company's business continuity plans. "It was not part of our playbook."</li><li>Many large banks have replicated a trader's office setup in their living room, including computers, monitors, Bloomberg terminal access, phones, and direct access to the bank's systems. </li><li>Citi's North American markets division started to test-drive WFH capabilities for traders the first week of March, sources familiar with the preparations told Business Insider.</li><li>Trading turrets - control centers that allow rapid-fire voice connection to colleagues, brokers, and clients - are a key part of how trading floors normally function. One hang-up of moving remote was the lack of turrets, a senior trader said.</li><li>JPMorgan Chase is among the banks to outfit more of its traders with physical home turrets in recent weeks, according to people familiar with matter. Firms are also testing software turrets. </li><li>Goldman Sachs is trying to approximate being in the same room with colleagues by exploring special videoconferencing setups, according to Atte Lahtiranta, the firm's chief technology officer.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Click here for more BI Prime stories.</a></li></ul>It was unthinkable a little over a month ago: Legions of Wall Street traders navigating <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-traders-eye-huge-paydays-during-coronavirus-volatility-2020-3">the most chaotic market in their lifetimes</a> from the comfort of their living rooms. With the spread of the novel coronavirus and increasing restrictions from governments to enforce social distancing, they're doing exactly that. Wall Street firms - which only weeks before were reluctant to encourage trading from home for security and compliance reasons - <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-is-preparing-for-remote-trading-as-coronavirus-spreads-2020-3">migrated most of their markets operations</a> to remote work in March.At Citigroup, more than 91% of the firm's 2,200 North American markets employees are working from home, including even some of the firm's essential risk takers, according to people familiar with the matter. Goldman Sachs' four trading floors in New York typically house thousands of employees during normal business times but by March 19 that had fallen to the low hundreds, according to a person briefed on the numbers. <h2>'It was not part of our playbook'</h2>This was, quite literally, never in playbook.Financial giants have long had plans in place to keep operations running in the event of a terrorist attack like 9/11 or a natural disaster, like Hurricane Sandy. But those largely focused on moving key personnel to backup sites. The shuttering of a single trading floor or office would have been unfortunate but manageable - every bank has sites scattered in the suburbs of trading hubs in New York and London, not to mention offices around the world to temporarily relocate staff. But those continuity plans didn't take into account a situation that would render nearly all trading floors around the globe unusable and force large numbers of trading staff to work from their homes. Amid the rapidly spreading Covid-19 outbreak, which has hit New York City especially hard, even splitting employees among backup sites quickly proved untenable. One bank trading executive, who was helping plan his firm's remote-work migration, likened their contingency site to the set of "The Wolf of Wall Street" - a "cavernous," boiler-room type facility stacked with desks that "ran afoul of all social distancing guidance."Banks were quickly forced to ditch their disaster gameplan and trying something brand new, testing and deploying remote-working capabilities to their vast trading ranks."Trading from home has never been done," a trading at executive at one of the biggest banks told Business Insider, referring to the company's business continuity plans. "It was not part of our playbook."That's because trading remotely comes with disadvantages and headaches. Some are tangible, while others are harder to grasp for the uninitiated. We spoke with more than a dozen insiders to understand the massive undertaking to enable remote trading, and which qualities of a trading floor are hardest to replicate from home. "Prior to five or six weeks ago, not only were they not talking about working from home, they were talking about not supporting it for compliance and security reasons," Tim Carmody, the chief technology officer of IPC, one of the primary suppliers of the trading hardware and software that connects Wall Street, told Business Insider. "And that rapidly changed."<h2>Overnighting supplies by UPS</h2>The efforts at Citigroup provide a window into how one bank responded. The bank's North American markets division started to test-drive WFH capabilities for traders the first week of March, when the scope of disruption from the pandemic had yet to fully materialize, according to sources familiar with the preparations.That Wednesday the bank selected a representative group of 20 traders from across the division and sent them home in Ubers with all the supplies they'd need - such as computers, monitors, VPN phones, network cables, monitors.After the pilot group proved it could work without incident, several days later, the bank identified its most critical staff in sales and trading - the top 10% of the 2,200-person group - and began assembling kits to have installed in their homes. They overnighted the supplies via UPS, though in many cases it took a couple days for the packages to arrive. The bank meanwhile required every employee in the division to acquire and set up a token that provides remote access to the company's systems, the sources said, transforming the reception area of one of its newly renovated trading floors into a makeshift Apple Genius Bar, staffed with technologists to troubleshoot any snafus.Three weeks later, fewer than 200 the division's employees are still reporting to company offices. But that number won't get down to zero any time soon. At Citi and elsewhere, top execs have decided that scores of top traders will need to continue reporting to work."Making decisions on key trading situations, how to manage certain books - you still need some decision makers to be on site and to be able to communicate very swiftly," a senior Wall Street executive told Business Insider. <h2>Turrets are critical mission-control centers for traders</h2>That communication is often enabled by trading turrets - mini-mission control centers that allow traders' split-second, rapid-fire voice connection to dozens of colleagues, brokers, and clients - that connect directly to a financial institution's phone systems. One of the initial hang-ups of moving to remote work was the lack of turrets, said one senior trader, a sentiment echoed by several others. That made trading slower and more likely to take place over chats. While stocks largely moved toward electronic trading in recent years, other asset classes, such as bonds and options, are still heavily traded person-to-person, over the phone. "They need to instantly be able to call people to make trades," a derivatives trader said, noting that before the exchanges recently closed their in-person venues, direct-line turrets were routinely used to communicate with floor index traders."Direct lines to other desks, sales, and clients is faster," added a former sell-side equities trader who now works at a hedge fund. "Also, some might have recording requirements depending on a product, i.e. CFTC rules, so can't just use cell phones at home."Regulators have relaxed some of these rules in recognition of these unprecedented challenges.<a href="https://cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8132-20"> The CFTC is offering relief on things like record-keeping and time-stamping</a> for market players including futures commission merchants, introducing brokers, swap dealers, retail foreign exchange dealers, and floor brokers. And while some traders have been set up with VPN phones connecting their turret lines to their home lines, many people don't have landlines anymore. Given the crisis at hand, the CFTC has allowed traders to create an email record of a conversation with a client, a reprieve that has expedited the transition, according to Wall Street execs. <h2>Solving the turret headache</h2>In rare instances prior to the coronavirus crisis, traders had turrets installed in their home offices. "There were very isolated cases, particularly heads of desks with a lot of power, who wanted turrets in their Hamptons home so they could work from home on Fridays," Carmody said. Banks in the past month have tried to deploy that once-privileged perk to many more traders. IPC has gotten orders for several thousand turrets in March, an exceptional uptick for a single month, Carmody said. Most of the 1,000-employee global tech company is working remotely, though it has kept open manufacturing facilities in Fairfield, Connecticut.JPMorgan Chase is among the banks to outfit more of its traders with physical home turrets in recent weeks, according to people familiar with matter. Firms are also testing software turrets. Software turrets that mimic the same functionality but on a trader's computer screen have seen an even greater surge of demand, Carmody said. These soft turrets lack the velocity and facility of traditional turrets - there are fewer speakers, moving between buttons and channels is slower, there's no push-to-talk or push-to-mute function - but the upfront costs are smaller and the software can be rolled out far more quickly. "There's a lot of functionality that the physical turret brings that will always be the gold standard," Carmody said. "The soft turret gives you a workable environment for this, but probably not a direct replacement."Citigroup was testing the functionality of one IPC soft turret last week, sources said, and has secured hundreds of refurbished laptops installed with the software that it plans to send out to personnel.Soft turrets are also likely to figure prominently in new protocols as banks tear up their old disaster-response plans, according to the bank trading executive who has been helping with his firm's remote-work migration.<h2>Nothing to replicate real-time interaction</h2>Still, a former trading executive at one of Wall Street's largest banks said it's hard to replace in-office intuition. In normal times, traders, particularly those that transact across asset classes, must be able to see which desks on a large trading floor are busy, call around within the bank at a moment's notice and in some cases, quickly walk over to a colleague for a simple answer about risk positions or inventory."There's nothing to replicate a salesforce and you talking and interacting in real time," another trader told Business Insider. "But we're in strange times."Working from a home office or spare bedroom deadens those touch points, the former executive said. While traders might be able to connect by video conference, electronic message, and phone, it can be hard to replace the other intangibles, the small bits of information a trader ingests.That's particularly true for some of the markets that have been slower to adapt electronically, he said, citing off-the-run Treasuries, foreign-exchange options, corporate debt, and structured commodities. Imagine the desk is working 10 inquiries simultaneously, and they are coming over voice, and negotiations are ongoing with all of them. In the office, a trader can see and hear and almost feel that activity, he said."I want to know where risk is being accumulated, where it might start accumulating, what types of clients are calling or not calling," he said. "There's an element of intuition that's hard to replace."The downside to being out of touch is getting flat-footed, accumulating a large position that suddenly suffers losses or letting risky positions build up in some corner of the firm. In such an environment, activity has to slow so that traders can get comfortable with their exposures. "You can't be as tactical with a book without that in-person presence," he said.Goldman Sachs is trying to approximate the feeling of being in the same room with colleagues by exploring special videoconferencing setups, according to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-incoming-cto-atte-lahtiranta-interview-2019-11">Atte Lahtiranta, the chief technology officer.</a> The setup would have specially arranged cameras and large dedicated screens, and run all day so that traders could seamlessly stay in visual contact with colleagues. Some are already using Zoom in this way, he said. "You could just put small monitors next to your desk, five of them, and you would see people eye-to-eye, and just turn your face toward them to talk," Lahtiranta said, describing a future solution. "Those to me are the kind of next steps that, if this really becomes long lasting, you will need to do because people will need that sort of interaction."There are real world implications if Wall Street can't get back to the office. Some have indicated the remote-work dynamic has exacerbated some challenges, including market liquidity. An ETF trader who also worked through the 2008 crisis said this is "the least liquid period I've ever traded in."Another trader said markets are more uncertain and harder to price, and he worries more about competing algos. "I don't think everyone's at full speed," the trader said. "Brokers are having a tough time with liquidity and the wide markets make it even harder to price."<a href="https://store.businessinsider.com/products/banking-briefing-subscription?itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=ctgr_bii&amp;itm_term=ctgr_subscription&amp;itm_content=wallstreet&amp;itm_campaign=banking-briefing-subscription-2"></a>

Wall Street's disaster playbook never included work-from-home trading. Insiders explain how banks rapidly adjusted during one of the most chaotic markets in history.

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